Delcy Rodríguez left New York without any public record, official request, or confirmation that she visited Nicolás Maduro at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, where the former dictator has been held since his capture in January, just a few kilometers from the UN headquarters in Manhattan.
The acting Venezuelan president was in the city from Monday to Thursday, when she returned to Caracas after participating in the 81st United Nations General Assembly and holding meetings with several world leaders, without any reports of efforts to see her predecessor at any point.
"We arrived a few hours ago from New York, after our participation in the United Nations General Assembly. We are pleased as a delegation for the mission accomplished," said Communication Minister Miguel Ángel Pérez Pirela in a video shared on X.
He affirmed that he was happy to reunite "once again with the Venezuelan people," and stated that he arrived directly to discuss government matters with his brother and President of the Parliament, Jorge Rodríguez; the Minister of Interior, Diosdado Cabello; and the Administrative and Digital Government Vice President, Anabel Pereira.
Her attitude towards Maduro was predictable since just a few hours after her arrival in the United States, Eric Martin, a State Department correspondent for Bloomberg News, directly asked her if she planned to visit Maduro in Brooklyn, to which she remained completely silent and did not respond.
This silence continued in her nearly 19-minute speech before the General Assembly on Wednesday, during which Rodríguez did not mention her former boss even once, nor did she make any reference to her personal, legal, or political situation.
The only indirect reference to the capture of the former dictator was a deliberately vague phrase: "In 2026, Venezuela has gone through two great and painful trials in its life as a nation: one, stemming from the strangulation of its internal political life and the heightened confrontation with the United States of America."
Instead, Rodríguez explicitly thanked Donald Trump «for his willingness to resume the path of diplomatic relations and cooperation with Venezuela».
On Tuesday, the acting president held a private meeting with the U.S. president at the Lotte Palace Hotel, as part of a reception for heads of state during the UN High-Level Week. Rodríguez described the meeting as "historic," marking the first between the two since Maduro's capture.
He also met with the presidents of Chile and Trinidad and Tobago, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and officials from the World Bank, the IMF, and the IDB.
Upon returning to Caracas, Rodríguez went directly to the National Electric Dispatch Center to assess the country's electrical situation, faced with a demand that exceeded 16,400 megawatts, the highest since 2017, attributed to high temperatures.
Rodríguez's behavior throughout the week —silence regarding Maduro, gratitude towards Trump, promise of elections with no specific date— is seen as a deliberate signal of distancing from the imprisoned ex-dictator and an opening towards the international community.
Maduro remains detained at the MDC Brooklyn alongside his wife, Cilia Flores, whose request for house arrest due to heart problems was denied by the U.S. prosecutor's office in mid-September.
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